Blockchain for Healthcare Systems

Challenges, Privacy, and Securing of Data

Sheikh Mohammad Idrees, Parul Agarwal, M. Afshar Alam, Sheikh Mohammad Idrees, Parul Agarwal, M. Afshar Alam

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367693527
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000454383
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Cryptography
• Index: Computer Science

Blockchain for Healthcare Systems: Challenges, Privacy, and Securing of Data provides a detailed insight on how to reap the benefits of blockchain technology in healthcare, as the healthcare sector faces several challenges associated with privacy and security issues. It also provides in-depth knowledge regarding blockchain in healthcare and the underlying components.

This book explores securing healthcare data using blockchain technology. It discusses challenges and solutions for blockchain technology in the healthcare sector and presents the digital transformation of the healthcare sector using different technologies. It covers the handling of healthcare data/medical records and managing the medical supply chain all using blockchain technology.

The contents of this book are highly beneficial to educators, researchers, and others working in a similar domain.

1 Blockchain Technology

A Strategic Resource

Nikhil Kant and Kumari Anjali

IGNOU

DOI: 10.1201/9781003141471-1

Contents

1. 1.1 Introduction
2. 1.2 Knowing about Blockchain
3. 1.3 Changing Landscape of Healthcare System
4. 1.4 Knowing about Strategic Resource
5. 1.5 Blockchain: A Strategic Resource
6. 1.6 Limitations of the Chapter
7. 1.7 Conclusion
8. References

1.1 Introduction

Constant advancements and growing significance of information and communication technology (ICT) have brought about a plethora of transformations requiring organizations to rethink the viability of conventional competition and value-generation which have lost considerable strategic effectiveness. In recent times, the liberalized, privatized, and globalized world has witnessed increased competition due to the presence or emergence of abundant organizations with almost similar objectives. Technological advancements, in the current much-hyped fourth industrial revolution which has introduced multiple innovations including blockchain – a digitally distributed ledger – have made their presence felt by remarkably influencing almost all aspects of our routine lives. They have brought forward many opportunities and challenges. In the changing landscape, the healthcare system cannot remain insulated from these risks and opportunities. A World Economic Forum (WEF) survey conducted in 2015 found that government use of blockchain would peak by 2023 (Kant, 2020). While blockchain has attracted huge investments from governments and other organizations such as banks, software organizations, and stock exchanges, the fast expansion of its use beyond the financial sector indicates that the healthcare system can also look forward to using it as a strategic resource.

The omnipresent learning environments can largely be benefitted from blockchain in finding solutions to the issues of vulnerability, privacy, and security (Bdiwi et al. 2017). The idiosyncrasies of blockchain in education can be witnessed in the enhancement of the certificate management with greater digital infrastructural data security and trust (Xu et al., 2017), and digital accreditation of the learning (Grech & Camilleri, 2017). Zhao et al. (2016) argue in favor of the increasing relevance of blockchain which gets support from IBM Corp. (2016). IBM Corp. (2016) informs about the declaration of more than one-third of C-suite executives as regards their consideration to engage with or already active engagement with blockchain. Christidis and Devetsikiotis (2016) posit that developers and researchers have already acquainted themselves with its huge capabilities and explored different applications in different sectors.

Blockchain, an open-source resource, has commonly been known as the core technology behind cryptocurrencies and has a very short history of merely a decade. In this short period, it has demonstrated its potential with a number of applications being used commercially in different industries sparking increasing interest from various industries and academic institutions in Europe and other countries (Grech and Camilleri 2017). This scenario hints at the need to explore its potential of revolutionizing the healthcare system also. Organizations creating the healthcare system desire and make commensurate effort to attain and sustain competitive advantage harnessing their capabilities of combining internal and external tangible and intangible resources for converting them into idiosyncratic for strategic utilization. With the fast adoption of digitization, healthcare has accumulated huge patients’ records in electronic form demanding greater security in using and exchanging these data where blockchain offers huge potentials as a responsible and transparent data distributing and storage mechanism, providing solutions to serious challenges related to data security, privacy, and integrity in healthcare (Khezr et al., 2019; Yaeger et al., 2019). Blockchain being a disruptive technological innovation has been encouraging the healthcare system to take appropriate strategic steps for achieving competitiveness and sustaining it further.

Literature shows consensus in considering contributions of innovations in the creation of competitiveness, and in recent past, the focus has increased on technological innovations (Weerawardena & Mavondo, 2011) with the supporting arguments that intangible resources, which include technological innovations also, are more strategic than tangible resources (Barney, 1991; Hitt et al., 2001). However, strategic use of blockchain in healthcare system either as the best-fitted technology or as an innovation is yet to be assessed, considering that an invention with successful commercial utility only can be construed as an innovation (Kant, 2020). For this, organizations in healthcare sector must apply blockchain-enabled applications for effective decision-making in order to bridge the chasm between expectations, priorities, practices, and models making use of their updated strategic informational knowledge of the dynamic developments and anticipated future trends.

Casino et al. (2019), in a comprehensive systematic review, have argued that limited attention has been paid to the state-of-the-art blockchain-enabled applications. This is despite several reviews focusing on its specific role in developing data-intensive applications and managing big data in a decentralized fashion, potential to enable trust and decentralization in service system, its security issues and technical aspects of its design, usability, data integrity, scalability, currency aspect, and security and privacy. Blockchain offers the huge potential to create competitiveness. Healthcare system can be one among multiple probable beneficiaries expecting useful disruptions with the support of idiosyncratic characteristics including but not limited to decentralization, traceability, immutability, reliability, trustworthiness, self-sovereignty, currency properties, transparency, provenance, disintermediation, collaboration, security, efficiency, etc. (Kant, 2020).

While the healthcare system is yet to taste the benefits offered by blockchain, the issue of considering it as a strategic resource for healthcare system faces inadequacy of relevant literature. However, in recent times, there has been a remarkable generation of interest among academics and industries toward blockchain with blockchain-enabled applications, and relevant research is coming up with new solutions almost every day (Khezr et al., 2019; Yaeger et al., 2019). With multiple applications in healthcare, blockchain offers potentialities for the improvement of monitoring devices, mobile health applications, and exchange and storage of electronic medical records, clinical trial information, insurance information. Despite the limitations of research studies, blockchain is set to transform the healthcare system with the support of its decentralized principles, thereby improving secured accessibility of patient information, changing the healthcare hierarchy, and developing a new patient-managed system of their own care (Chen et al., 2019). This chapter seeks to discuss blockchain as a strategic resource that can help healthcare system attain and sustain competitive advantage with the increased applications volume, and heightens significance for researchers, professionals, and policymakers.

1.2 Knowing about Blockchain

Blockchain denotes a secured information storing and sharing system with huge transparency where every block of the chain is not only its own independent unit with its own information but also a dependent link in the entire chain at the same time where a participant-regulated network is created by this duality which, without any intervention of a third party, store and share the information (Chen et al., 2019). Blockchain has gained so much popularity in recent times that on daily basis, we hear news about its new and innovative applications with the perceived disrupting ability affecting our routine daily life significantly. Blockchain is being considered as one of the most important technological trends in this century, which not only can handle big data in a secured transparent mechanism but also can lead us toward a decentralized computing future with enhanced trust and transparency significantly where common public can benefit immensely from the reduced influence of the few select powerful computing stalwarts.

Kant (2020) finds its distributed and decentralized nature and the idiosyncratic features of record permanence and smart contracts as the primary reasons behind huge perceived expectations. Hou (2017) emphasizes that applications enabled by blockchain, with the help of its idiosyncrasies in disintermediation of transactions and record keeping, offer huge potentialities in transforming the way local governments operate. He receives support from Casino et al. (2019), who favor the aims of blockchain governance in offering the same services (legal documents registration, attestation, identification, marriage contracts, taxes, voting, etc.) offered by the state and its corresponding public authorities more efficiently but maintaining the same validity in a decentralized mechanism.

Figure 1.1 provides a basic idea of how blockcha in operates. Grech and Camilleri (2017) define it as a distributed digital information recording ledger, shareable in a community where members maintain own data collectively validated by all the members. Members can see entire transactions history because of their permanence, transparency, and searchability. They further note that update is added to the tail of the “chain” constituting a “block” containing entries and edits which are initiated-validated-recorded-distributed by a cryptology-based protocol eliminating the need of any intermediary. It performs as the trust-keeper which, for the purpose of ensuring integrity of the system, asks participants to run complex algorithms. Blockchain is broadly referred to as “digitally distributed ledger” as it denotes a form of digital ledger to record transactions being copied to every networked computer. Blockchain is found to have idiosyncratic characteristic of keeping all the data time-stamped while the length of the chain continuously grows. Nakamoto (2008), an unknown person associated with the invention of Bitcoin, informs that blockchain uses participants-maintained distributed techniques and consensus algorithms achieved through verification mechanisms, e.g., proof-of-work. Table 1.1 illustrates the idiosyncrasies because of which blockchain may be considered strategic.

FIGURE 1.1 How blockchain operates: An overview.

TABLE 1.1 Idiosyncrasies Associated with Blockchain

IET Healthcare (2019)	Data integrity, provenance from cradle to grave, security, resilience, unalterable evidence, out of the box, no single point of failure, single source of truth, immutability, transaction history/traceability, data privacy, synchronization, dynamic consent, personal data storage clouds enabling individual access, self-executing contractual states, multilevel de-identification and encryption technologies
Chen et al. (2018)	Reliability, trust, security, efficiency, decentralization, traceability, immutability, currency properties
Grech and Camilleri (2017)	Self-sovereignty, transparency, provenance, trust, immutability, disintermediation, collaboration
Underwood (2016)	Immutability, transparency, trust

Underwood (2016) believes blockchain to be an innovative emerging technology with huge potential which, as a distributed decentralized ledger technology, acts as a shar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Editors
• Contributors
• Chapter 1 Blockchain Technology: A Strategic Resource
• Chapter 2 Blockchain Technology and Its Applications in the Healthcare Sector
• Chapter 3 An Overview of Blockchain Technology Concepts from a Modern Perspective
• Chapter 4 Blockchain Technology: A Panacea for Medical Distribution Ailments
• Chapter 5 Digital Transformation in Healthcare: Innovation and Technologies
• Chapter 6 Modernizing the Health Insurance Industry Using Blockchain and Smart Contracts
• Chapter 7 Blockchain Technology Applications for Improving Quality of Electronic Healthcare System
• Chapter 8 Computing Techniques for Securing Healthcare Data with Blockchain Technology
• Chapter 9 Blockchain-based Solutions for COVID-19: Challenges, Advantages, and Applications
• Chapter 10 Managing Medical Supply Chain Using Blockchain Technology
• Chapter 11 Sustainable and Effective Blockchain-based Solutions for the Security and Privacy of Healthcare Data
• Chapter 12 Security and Privacy Concerns for Blockchain While Handling Healthcare Data
• Chapter 13 Blockchain Technology in Medical Data Management and Protection in India: The Law in the Making
• Index